Two travels - No.1: Ljubljana, Slovenia

[cmo]

This weekend I have to travel to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

Apart from the tourist attractions, what are the places that a "black-and-white photographer/street shooter/sometimes Infrared photographer" might love?

 

[janezek]

Hi,
At this time it is hard to get some special IR photos in Ljubljana. It is not likely that you will see some sun, weather forecast is mostly cloudy, besides most of the time it Ljubljana has plenty of fog during winter. And no green grass or trees.
On the other hand there are a lot of chances to take lovely black and white photos.
Ljubljana is very safe, in last 20 years it became beautiful city (a bigger town to be honest ), there are many places where you can take great photos. My advice would be to visit a book store and take a look at some photo monography of Ljubljana so yo'll get the basic idea. You can ask then a sales person where are those places located. Ljubljana is small enough to get everywhere by foot and people mostly know the city pretty well.
For the start you can visit Tivoli park, castle, old town, Three bridges (and all other bridges over Ljubljanica river), market place, Cankarjev dom (cultural place, there are also two photo exhibitions at the moment, free entrance), Krizanke,...
Enjoy
Janez

 

[thefizz]

Ljubljana is a beautiful city with lovely streets to spend hours roaming around. There are nice views of the city from the castle.

 

[ntenny]

I found Ljubljana to be a really likable, photogenic city. Even the "tourist attractions" like the castle are well worthwhile, and it seems like it would be a good place to just wander around doing street photography. Something else not to miss, I think, is the "autonomous zone" of Metelkova near the train station---it's hard to explain exactly *what* it is, but there's a tremendous cluster of street art there, and I expect that in milder weather it would be a unique social and people-watching area, although I was there on a snowy January night and it was pretty deserted.

In the bleak midwinter, the city was very visually appealing in a low-light, spare, snow-and-stone sort of way. By this time of year I expect it'll look very different.

-NT

 

[janezek]

Metelkova is a place for alternative culture, there are exhibitions and evening events.

 

[marco.taje]

Uh, and DO NOT forget a pre-dinner drink on the river banks. Such a lovely atmosphere! Definitely a paraphotographic experience

 

[mablo]

Ljubljana is a wonderful place. People are very polite and civilised, food is a bit like in Italy and sceneries are like in Switzerland.

 

[darkosaric]

If you will have time (not far from Ljubljana) - I liked this place a lot when I was there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predjama_Castle

 

[Mike Crawford]

Lovely town and very photogenic. If you have time, the bus to Lake Bled takes about an hour which is a great location. Not exactly ideal for street photography, but very picturesque and some good restaurants round the lake.
PS. Not my photo but from http://www.lake-bled.net/

 

[janezek]

Slovenia is a small, but very beautiful country with diverse landscape, old towns, lakes, mountains, seaside, karst, Pannonian plain, caves, rivers, just about everything you can imagine. Within two hours from Ljubljana you can reach any point in our country.
But if you have only a couple of days, I'd recommend you to visit Ljubljana and some very near places. maybe two old towns Škofja Loka and Kranj. You can reach both by bus in about half an hour. Actually Kranj is located only 8 kiometers from Ljubljana Airport. Ljubljana is about 30 from the airport

 

[Dan Grisez]

As a guy who is half Slovenian (and never having been to Slovenia), I am always interesting in seeing photographs of the homeland of my maternal grandparents. I would love to see what you came up with this past weekend!

Dan

 

[gr82bart]

I've always wanted to go - and may do so this summer. Have fun!

Regards, Art.

 

[cmo]

I am already back from Ljubljana, and I must say, I love that place. It's a little like the east european version of switzerland, at much lower prices. Stay in the better hotels, though, in the first night I tried to sleep in a weird place where you could easily hear what the people next door do at night, in my case several young guys from London on a binge drinking tour kept the other guests awake.

The place is safe, very good food (try the 'torta' cakes, they are to die for), very good coffee, and the market in Ljubljana is a little paradise. I shot a lot in the streets, about 800 photos in 2 days. The landscape of this small country is just amazing, I will have to come back and take a large format camera with me just to capture the beauty.

What I did not know before is that there are many photo exhibitions and even galleries. Currently there are:

The slovenian "press photo of the year" exhibition
http://www.sloveniapressphoto.si/novice/zadnje-novice/960

A show with the winners from a social documentary contest
http://www.ekvilib.org/index.php?Itemid=19&option=com_phocagallery&view=categories&lang=en

I found that many people speak either english or german. Slovenian as a language is somewhat encrypted - it must be a big challenge to codebreakers... ;-)